Tag Archives: New tests/assays

March 2019—The standard riff for talking about a promising new cancer test should be familiar to anyone within sneezing distance of a laboratory: There’s no one-size-fits-all assay. But if any test were to come close, it would be liquid biopsy. Are clinicians eager to use it? Check. Is it relatively simple to do (check) with fairly quick turnaround times (check)? Does it work for solid and hematological tumors? Check and check. Across multiple specimen types—serum, urine, vitreous fluid, cerebrospinal fluid, stool? Quite likely. Can it be used to characterize patients’ molecular profiles, monitor therapy, assess tumor evolution, identify resistance mechanisms, and detect early disease and minimal/measurable residual disease? Half a dozen checks. Even if liquid biopsy does fall short of a one-size-fits-all assay, it’s doing a reasonable impression of a Swiss Army knife (if not Sergeant Troy’s sword fantastic, for those of you who are Thomas Hardy fans).  

June 2018—Testing for anti-müllerian hormone got a boost in 2017 when the year began and ended with the FDA clearing the first two fully automated AMH assays from Roche and Beckman Coulter.

May 2018—If a seismic shift were to happen in microbiology, the technology behind the Accelerate Pheno system and PhenoTest BC test kit, which won FDA approval last year as a rapid pathogen identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) system for blood cultures, could well be the cause.